


He Ran Into My Knife Ten Times

by DabMyWetties



Series: Randomly Inspired Oneshots [5]
Category: Pentatonix, Superfruit
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Humor, Implied Relationships, Language, M/M, One Shot, Spooky, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-30
Updated: 2017-05-30
Packaged: 2018-11-06 17:27:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11040855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DabMyWetties/pseuds/DabMyWetties
Summary: “Someone’s breaking in!” Mitch whisper-screams, his hand blindly scrabbling over the nightstand, reaching for his phone.Scott’s already half out of bed. “Lock yourself in the bathroom,” he croaks, voice sleep-heavy and slurred. “Go. Now. Run.”





	He Ran Into My Knife Ten Times

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> This is for Morgan, who made me laugh so hard I was in tears in the middle of Starbucks. People were staring. 
> 
> It started as an offhand suggestion on Twitter and, well, it kind of snowballed from there.

 

The crash of exploding glass shatters the stillness, the silence of 4:14am making the sound that much louder. It’s certainly loud enough to wake both Scott and Mitch. 

“Someone’s breaking in!” Mitch whisper-screams, his hand blindly scrabbling over the nightstand, reaching for his phone. 

Scott’s already half out of bed. “Lock yourself in the bathroom,” he croaks, voice sleep-heavy and slurred. “Go. Now. Run.” 

“What are you doing?” Mitch demands even as his fingers find the phone and he takes a few sluggish steps towards the bathroom. Scott is moving in the wrong direction, away from what little safety might be behind a locked door. “Come on!” 

“Go,” Scott mutters again, sounding more awake. “Gonna chase‘m away.” He’s almost to the bedroom door now, and he reaches for the Louisville Slugger from the corner it’s stashed in. 

Mitch is across the room and gripping his arm before Scott finishes his sentence. “Are you fucking insane?” Rather than answer the question, Scott hoists the baseball bat onto his shoulder and raises his other hand, with Mitch still attached, in a stop gesture. 

“Mitch. Go. Nobody’s inside because the alarm would be going off. Bathroom, just in case, please?” 

Eyes narrowed and mouth set in a thin line, Mitch stares Scott down. The alarm thing is a good point. He hadn’t thought of that. Still, Scott going all LeBron on a potential murderer with that bat is quite possibly the dumbest idea the blonde’s ever had. “Fine,” he whispers. “But if you get beaten with your own bat I will literally pee in your mouth.” 

There. That’ll show him. Mitch turns on his heel and angrily tiptoes to the bathroom where he stands waiting, somewhere between annoyed and terrified, for Scott to come back. It seems to take forever before he hears the familiar footsteps. 

“You are so gross,” Scott says, stepping into the bathroom. “Good news, no one broke in. Bad news, the gold record plaque fell off the wall and now there’s glass everywhere.” 

Mitch stares at him. “ _ How _ did it fall off the wall? We got those special anchor things so they wouldn’t fall, didn’t we?” 

“Yeah,” Scott agrees. “I dunno, home improvement isn’t really my thing. Shit happens, glass breaks, I’m going back to bed.”  

Two nights later the piano wakes Mitch. 

At first he just grumbles in his sleep. What the hell is Scott thinking playing Zimmer at this hour? “Sttttooopppppp,” Mitch groans when the music continues. “You stop, too late for piano,” Scott mumbles back… from right next to him. 

They both sit straight up, all traces of sleep gone. Scott isn’t playing the piano at oh-fuck-thirty and Mitch certainly isn’t playing it; who the hell is? 

“Bathroom,” Scott orders, sliding out of bed and heading for the baseball bat and the door again without giving Mitch a chance to argue. Mitch doesn’t argue, though he may possibly mutter threats under his breath about what he’ll do if Scott gets his stupid pretty blonde head bashed in with his own bat as he perches on the edge of the tub. 

Things get a little more exciting this time around because the police come. Scott insists on it. The piano had stopped as he’d left the bedroom and he hadn’t found anyone inside or anything amiss, but at this point he’s nervous that he’s missed a point of entry or  _ something  _ because this is just not right. “I dunno, I don’t want to bother them for nothing,” Mitch tells him, though he secretly thinks it may not be a  _ bad  _ idea. He remembers reading something on the internet about crazy people secretly living in attics and closets and shit. Maybe they have a crazy attic-dweller.

In the end, two of LAPD’s finest swing by and Mitch feels positively dumb for having them come out in the middle of the damn night over some piano music even if the one cop is pretty hot. Perhaps echoing his feelings, Scott is immediately apologetic to the officers. “I’m sorry, I know this is ridiculous,” he says, his hands kind of flailing helplessly. “It’s just, someone was playing the piano, and the other night one of the records came off the wall and shattered, and it  _ shouldn’t  _ have because they’re on there good, and…” 

The cops don’t find anything after a thorough sweep of the house and yard and a test of the security system. There isn’t even a crazy attic-dweller; the sexy one kindly checked when Mitch hesitantly brought up the possibility. 

“Maybe it’s the ghost,” Mitch says. They’re back in bed, trying and failing to fall back asleep. “I dunno,” Scott replies after a minute. “I mean, it’s fun to joke about but do you really think -” 

“The psychic twins felt spirits,” Mitch cuts him off. He’s tired and frustrated and more than a little on edge. Scott immediately moves to soothe him. “I know, Mitchy, I know. I just meant, maybe it’s was just bad luck, or… I dunno. Should we get more crystals? You know more about this stuff than I do.” 

Mitch huffs a sigh. “Maybe an exorcist at this point.” 

Two days later, as they’re eating dinner, a kitchen cabinet slowly swings open and then slams shut. 

A day after that, as they’re halfway through a Criminal Minds marathon on Netflix, the program changes to a Civil War documentary. “Weird,” Scott remarks, clicking back to the main menu and finding where they left off. Weird, indeed. Twenty minutes later the same thing happens. They switch off the TV.  

By the time they’re once again awoken in the middle of the night by more piano music, Scott is out of smartass comments about crystals and bad luck and rogue breezes and is all too happy when Mitch puts a platform-booted foot down and says he’s calling in a professional paranormal...ist. 

Paolo is certainly professional, what with his button up shirt and understated tie. He even has tasteful off-white business cards with his name and “Paranormal Investigator” and a watermark and that certainly screams professionalism. He’s the fourth one they’ve tried. Julia wanted to sell them a monthly “spiritual cleansing” service. Hans said their house was built on an old Indian burial ground -  _ Indian _ , not Native American, and that is so inappropriate - and suggested they move elsewhere while handing them a business card for his realty business. Byron had been so fucking  _ weird  _ that Scott had ushered him out of the house after approximately six and a half minutes. 

Maybe Paolo will fare better.  _ Hopefully  _ he’ll fare better. Mitch is nearly to the point of calling Hans up about that whole moving to a new place thing because Mama needs to fucking  _ sleep  _ more than a few hours at a time.

“Can you give me a bit of a tour?” Paolo asks. “Maybe some of the areas you’ve noticed any oddities?” Mitch had started to explain the strange happenings when he’d called to interview Paolo but he hadn’t wanted to hear details - something about poisoning the well. He’d insisted on knowing as little as possible. With a shrug at each other, Scott and Mitch usher him to the piano and stand awkwardly by as Paolo runs his fingers lightly over the keys, eyes half-closed.  

Next they move to the kitchen. Paolo immediately walks over to the cabinet that had opened on its own last week. He opens and shuts it a few times, nodding, and Mitch can feel his heart pounding. Scott stares at the paranormalist wide-eyed, then shifts his gaze to Mitch; they hold an unspoken conversation made up entirely of facial expressions about how the hell Paolo could have chosen that specific cabinet and maybe this guy is actually legit and this is scary as fuck. “Yep,” Paolo murmurs after a stroll through the rest of the kitchen. “You’ve definitely got a buddy here. Where next?” 

They move through the rest of the house, Paolo stopping and touching the TV, the framed plaques, and several areas in the studio. “He or she isn’t malevolent,” Paolo comments as the three men gather in the living room. “Mischievous, I think, but not nasty. So. Do you want to attempt contact with your guest here, or…?” Mitch cringes but Scott positively bounces in excitement. “Yes!” Scott exclaims before Mitch can even begin to ask for an exorcism instead of a conversation. “How do we make contact? Do we say a seance, or use one of those EVP things? What do we do? Do you need candles?” 

Paolo laughs. “Traditional seances aren’t my thing and EVP is just auditory pareidolia. I’ll kind of...meditate, and listen for anything your guest has to say, and pass it on to you.”

Well that doesn’t sound  _ too  _ bad. 

And that's how Scott and Mitch find themselves sitting awkwardly on their couch as Paolo hums quietly - and quite off-key - to himself as he passes a chunk of hematite from one hand to the other repeatedly, eyes closed in concentration. This is a bit different than what they’d expected. 

“Youtube,” Paolo says after a few minutes. “I’m getting something about Youtube, but take that with a grain of salt since you already told me you do stuff on Youtube.” He pauses. “Carrie Underwood, too.” 

By this point Mitch is fairly sure they got yet another crappy paranormalist. Carrie Underwood? He shoots Scott a frown and an eyeroll, but then Paolo is talking again. 

“Charles. Does that name mean anything?” Mitch racks his brain; he’s got a few acquaintances named Charles but none of them are dead as far as he knows. Scott pipes up - “I have, like, a distant cousin named Charles. I  _ think  _ he’s related to me, at least.” 

“Mmm.” Paolo murmurs noncommittally, and he stops with the rock-passing thing. His eyes pop open. “Charles. Charles. Charles. Charles. Charles. Charles. Charles.” Mitch physically scrambles away from Paolo’s sudden chanting while doing a little  _ “what the fuck” _ chanting of his own. “Charles. Charles. Beloved. Beloved Charles. Beloved Charles.” 

It hits them both then, Scott and Mitch staring at each other wide eyed and open mouthed. 

“Beloved Charles. Nashville. Nashville. Nashville. Beloved Charles. Beloved,” Paolo continues chanting and then blinks, stopping abruptly. “Huh. Holy shit,” he says, expression a mix of stunned and amused. “He’s a feisty one! Did, uh, any of that mean anything to you guys?” 

They can only blink at him, Mitch perched on the back of the sofa like a deranged cat and Scott halfway to standing in a near-crouch. “Take that as a yes, then,” Paolo answers himself. “Your beloved Charles says he wants to be friends and didn’t mean to scare you.” 

“Well he did!” Mitch yelps, casually sliding off the back of the couch and into a more normal sitting position. “What the hell, Charles? You can’t just do shit like that!” And he feels absolutely ridiculous talking to a fucking ghost but there he is, and is it  _ really  _ any more ridiculous than the last hour of his life?  Scott, meanwhile, is grinning like a lunatic. “I told you!” he chortles. “I told you there was a ghost in that hotel! Charles, old buddy, it’s been years!” 

Mitch turns beseeching eyes to Paolo. “Tell him to stop breaking shit and scaring us? Please? Because I can’t take much more of this. We need sleep, as you can probably tell…” he trails off and gestures towards Scott, who is happily chattering away at their beloved Charles. 

After Paolo leaves their lives settle back into normalcy. It’s a new normal and is, in fact, far from the commonly accepted definition of  _ normal  _ but it’s their normal now. Charles is part of it. It takes a few weeks and couple more visits with Paolo to help with the whole communication thing, but after a time it’s second nature to greet Charles when they come home, to say goodbye when they leave, to say goodnight and good morning and to say things like “Hey Charles, remember that time we asked you if you watched Youtube videos?” That seems to be all he wants because the creepy shit stops, and he only does things like open cabinets or plink a note on the piano to include himself in conversation. 

It becomes so normal that sometimes they forget to warn new visitors. Usually Charles leaves them alone but sometimes, if he’s feeling feisty, he’ll bang out some nasty chords on the piano or drag a guest’s shoe across the floor. Mitch finds those instances a little embarrassing but Scott thinks they’re hilarious. He takes great joy in “introducing” Charles when it happens, and laughing when a guest rightfully thinks he’s joking because denying Charles’ existence is a sure way to get some real action out of him. At least he doesn’t break glass anymore. Mitch had put his foot down after the third time sweeping up shards by threatening an exorcism, so now Charles makes things levitate when faced with disbelieving new friends. It’s not ideal, but it’s better. 

Then there’s the time Charles earns his keep, when there is an actual break-in. Scott and Mitch are at the studio when they get the call from the police. Someone had smashed a window to gain entry, the alarm company notified the police, and the police had arrived to find the damage but no burglars. The two men drop everything and race home and, after a thorough examination of the house, find nothing is missing. There’s the broken window, dusty from the search for fingerprints, and scattered haphazardly on the floor in front of that same window are shoes, couch cushions, an umbrella, some books, three apples, and the doormat. 

It doesn’t take long for Scott and Mitch to figure out what had happened: someone broke in and Charles threw everything nonbreakable he could get his ghostly hands on at the intruder or intruders as they climbed in through the broken window. Mitch is putting every shred of acting ability he has to use in keeping a straight (ha!) face as the detective gestures at the mess of random objects on the floor. “We think that the intruder was starting to take things out when he got spooked, dropped everything, and ran,” Detective Oblivious says, because of course three apples and an umbrella are prime thieving items. But Mitch nods solemnly and Scott murmurs something about obsessed fans and installing surveillance cameras, and the detective promises increased patrols in the area and makes sure they have his card in case they notice anything missing. 

Once the police clear out and they call in someone to board up the broken window, Scott throws his hand in the air as though he’s high fiving a...well, a ghost. “Charles, you are awesome!” Mitch feels a little silly, but he does the same. “Thanks, Charles.” 

He’s answered with a faint tap on the palm of his upraised hand. 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> See: Superfruit "Ghost Hunting" from Feb 2014


End file.
